The acquisition of aspect in Modern Greek: Grammatical aspect and aspectual adverbials in children's grammars

Abstract

The acquisition of the verb and its grammar plays a central role in early language acquisition. This paper focuses οn aspects of the acquisition of verbal aspect in Modern Greek language. Ιn parιicular, the following will be looked at: (a) Greek children's comprehension and acquisition of the semantics of viewpoint aspect, (b) The role of aspectual adverbial in the determination of aspect in MG, as well as the children's awareness and mastery of the system, (c) Finally, it will be shown (i) That the way children combine aspectual adverbials with verbs marked for viewpoint aspect can provide insights about their acquisition of the semantics of aspect . This is made explicit in the way they correct an ungrammatical input by: a) omitting the aspectual adverbial, b) by changing the aspectual marking οn the verb, or c) by substituting an aspectual adverbial with another one in a clause, (ii) Regarding the positioning of aspectual adverbials in children' s grammars, Ι will show that quite frequently they place the aspectual adverbial to a position immediately following the νerb.